Announcing Book Club Workshop!

I’m teaching a class, you guys

(cross-posted from my Substack)

One curiosity I’ve had since childhood is what it’s like to live another life, and the ritual that lets me do it is reading. I used to get a little carried away. (Apparently you’re not supposed to read novels at the dinner table, or during math.)

Fast-forward to my adulthood and reading still occupies most of my time. I’ve read thousands of published books by this point. Between client projects and my acquiring editor days, I’ve also read hundreds of not-yet-published books.

So many unpublished novel manuscripts (that have beautiful prose, interesting settings, and charming characters) feel like they’re missing some subtle, subterranean wiring. Readers can watch a character experience a big emotion but not necessarily feel invested or emotionally impacted ourselves—especially if we haven’t been primed to hope for or dread any specific actions or outcomes.

Plot points are satisfying when (forgive me)…they don’t just fall out of a coconut tree. When they exist in the context of all in which they live and what came before them.

I’m saying you can get tricky and go back and reverse-engineer that context.

You know who’s great at doing that? Poets! For poets, the structure of a work (how it is told) is essential to the meaning of the work. So when poets write novels, those novels tend to be cool as hell. They satisfy reader cravings for structure but often in unusual ways.

I could teach a class on this, I thought. Participants could read two different novels as part of a wider study on structure—and, through that study, create outlines for their own novels. A book club, but not a regular book club. A workshop, but not a regular workshop.

This idea has been turning over in my mind for months now. I made a syllabus but tucked it aside for a rainy day, then took

Esmé Weijun Wang’s excellent workshop on online workshops (more of her classes here) and decided that the time is now. (Thank you, Esmé!)

Book Club Workshop is born!

This first iteration is focused on novels by poets, specifically Monarch by Candice Wuehle (which I had the pleasure of acquiring and editing for Soft Skull Press) and Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva (which I had the pleasure of reading and enjoying). We’ll also talk about some poems, John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, and Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode.

Class meets on Zoom and starts August 13th. Candice and Melissa will join as special guests for the final class on October 22nd! (You could have a full outline in time for NaNoWriMo.)

~ * ~ Full deets here. * ~ *

I’d really appreciate help spreading the word if you can!

MONARCH by Candice Wuehle is out now, THE RED ZONE is out tomorrow!

Cover of MONARCH, a novel by Candice Wuehle. Cover design and animation by Michael Salu

MONARCH, the debut novel by poet Candice Wuehle, published on March 29th! The cryptic worlds of Hanna and Stranger Things mingle with the dark humor of Dare Me in this debut novel about a teen beauty queen who discovers she’s been a sleeper agent in a deep state government program.

This book is for anyone who digs witchy podcasts, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Body Keeps the Score, Stranger Things, Ultraluminous, Drop Dead Gorgeous, But I’m a Cheerleader, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Sabrina Orah Mark’s Happily column at the Paris Review, Pam Grossman’s Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power, as well as Initiated, the memoir by Amanda Yates Garcia, Oracle of LA, on trauma and finding empowerment through ritual.

NPR calls MONARCH “irresistibly weird…the kind of book that you want to start reading again immediately after turning the last page — not just to trace the conspiracy at its heart, but to appreciate how its kaleidoscope of beauty pageants, Y2K anxieties, famous dead girls, and deep state machinations synthesizes into an exploration of what makes up a self.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal praises it as “some curious brew of Robert Ludlum and Don DeLillo” and Chicago Review of Books says, “Wuehle is an artisan; one senses while reading her that she has absolute control over the page—could conjure any emotion or image with startling concision, no matter how surreal or uncanny.”

Candice was interviewed at NYLON and The Daily Iowan, and wrote a gorgeous, funny essay for CrimeReads on growing up in the crime-addicted world of the late ‘90s, and the power of The Joke. To get into the era, Candice recommended a list of 90s/Y2K books at LitHub. And if you want to hear what MONARCH sounds like, Candice made a playlist for you at Largehearted Boy.

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"A deeply introspective novel with a notable metaphor for reinvention after trauma in the form of a weaponized pageant girl."—Kirkus Reviews

"Candice Wuehle had me at 'Jon Benet Ramsey.' The poet's new novel follows a former child pageant star as she discovers ties to her previous glory and a deep state government program. Add an occult wellness guru to the mix, a heaping of mommy issues, and a queer romance for taste and this might just be my ideal book. —Kerensa Cadenas, Thrillist

"Readers sturdy enough to peer into this glittering, multifaceted novel will find weaponized beauty reflected back." —Publishers Weekly

"Don DeLillo can only dream of being Candice Wuehle, who's wrenched the maximalist postmodern novel from the hands of old white men and given it an enticingly feminist spin. MONARCH is a smart, weird, funny gut punch, the kind of book that will blister your brain in the best possible way." —Rafael Frumkin, author of The Comedown

“This book is really quite sinister, and I mean that in the Latin sense—MONARCH takes the left-hand path through a chilling (and, if you're honest with yourself, quite real) landscape as Jessica, a decommissioned MKUltra-esque beauty queen, traces back to her origins as such. Along the way, she has to tell the true from the false, which can be difficult when you have a closet full of alters and a lot of gruesome off-label memories.

“Underneath it all is a question you can probably relate to even if you aren’t the progeny of a cryogenically preserved mother and a father who lectures on Boredom Studies: How do we know which of our reactions belong to us? How can we tell apart the conditioned self from the one we actually live with, especially when we've been trauma-trained into not looking too closely at certain facts? What happens when our frozen selves start to thaw? 

“If you've always been suspicious of the institutions of childhood, beauty, and sentimentality, this book is for you. If you crave a frosty narrative voice with the whip and torque of a bitchy gymnast, this book is for you. It will make you smarter. And it will also upset your schema for the world—but you'll be glad, I promise.” —Sarah Elaine Smith, author of Marilou is Everywhere

“In this riddled pageantric, insomniac, photographic, and university-infused world of eating disorders, triple suicides, astral projections, enigmatic bruises, and uncontrollable impulses, Candice Wuehle’s poetic and narrative gaze on everything she Midas-touches is eyelined, eyeshadowed, polished, Norwegian lip-penciled, and loose powdered with her devilishly inventive, singularly imaginative beauty and a devastating wry sense of humor. Her brilliance in MONARCH will lacquer, enamel, and wax you and turn your mind inside out like a monarch butterfly macerated in emulsion.” —Vi Khi Nao, author of The Vegas Dilemma and Swimming with Dead Stars

“A wise, unsettling, and multifaceted masterpiece, MONARCH succeeds on all levels—as a portrait of an endearingly dysfunctional family, as a shadow history of Y2K and the hidden power structure underlying and undermining contemporary life, and as a profound exploration of the extremely dicey prospect of being a self in a body in the world. Unless you’re hiding in an underground city or frozen in a kryokammer in the desert, you'll want to run out and get this one right away!” —David Leo Rice, author of The Dodge City Trilogy, Angel House, and Drifter: Stories

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Out 4/19

Chloe Caldwell’s The Red Zone: a searching, galvanizing memoir about blood and love, and how learning more about her period, PMS, PMDD, and the effects of hormones on moods transformed her relationships—to a new partner, to family, to non-blood kin, and to her own body.

Chloe has a few upcoming events, spanning 4/19 – 6/26; full list here.

"Caldwell’s candor about all things menstrual is the greatest strength of this dynamic book . . . [W]omen who suffer from PMDD will take solace in the ups and downs of Caldwell’s journey toward self-acceptance, health, and love. The narrative may also appeal to anyone who suffers frustration and anger in the face of an illness for which they struggle to get an accurate diagnosis, a situation that disproportionately affects women. Provocatively intimate reading." —Kirkus Reviews

“Not since Elizabeth Wurtzel’s More, Now, Again have I been so obsessed with a book of nonfiction. I read The Red Zone in one day, in one chair, four cups of coffee, and after: a single cigarette. Obsessed.” —Elizabeth Ellen, founder/editor of SF/LD Books, author of Person/a and Her Lesser Work

“A coming-of-age memoir for those of us in our thirties who are still trying to come of age, Chloe Caldwell's The Red Zone is an incredible tale of vulnerability, family, and periods. As hilarious as it is heartfelt, and as informative as it is inspirational, here is as honest a tale of self-discovery—and eventual self-acceptance—as has ever been written. A bloody brilliant book.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

"The necessity and urgency of The Red Zone made me wonder how I—and any woman—had lived so long without it. Through the lens of PMDD and the female body, Caldwell refracts every issue imaginable, from relationships to hormones to queerness to stepmotherhood to blended families, all with hilarity, intimacy and depth. Feeling seen by this book is an understatement; it's a survival guide." —Zaina Arafat, author of You Exist Too Much

“Chloe Caldwell invites us to call shotgun on one of her most intimate, moving, and hilarious rides yet! Tinder, THC, Poshmark, WebMD, Prozac, diner eggs, ovulation—The Red Zone has all the highs and lows you come to expect in her delightful nonfiction. Plus her exploration of PMDD and being a stepmom offers a texture all their own. The Red Zone operates like a love story indeed on so many levels—we readers feel so loved turning every page of this gorgeous offering.” —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity 

“Finally (finally!) someone wrote a book about struggling to understand your body and your heart and finding the answers on the internet. This book is moving, funny, and impossible to put down. Caldwell reveals the messiness of life in a way few writers can pull off.” —Chelsea Martin, author of Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life

“The Red Zone: A Love Story is a period memoir as only Chloe Caldwell could write it, with warmth and particularity and charm. I smiled in recognition every few pages, read parts angrily aloud to my husband as though they were his fault, and laughed loudly enough at others to wake up my dogs. Yes, it's a love story, but The Red Zone is also an adventure, which may sound like a strange descriptor for a book about PMDD until you have experienced it through Caldwell's wry, piercing, fundamentally optimistic eyes. Both personal and communal, searching and exuberant, The Red Zone will speak to anyone who has been led by pain, curiosity, or misdiagnosis to become a detective of her own body.” —Kristi Coulter, author of Nothing Good Can Come from This